Long Lane Honey Bee Farms is a family beekeeping business designed to encourage, assist and educate others in the wonderful experience of keeping honeybees. We are the one stop beekeeping shop, providing classes, beekeeping supplies, bees to those who are getting started in keeping honeybees. Perhaps you will be the next one! David Burns is an EAS certified Master Beekeeper.
Visit Our Website at: www.honeybeesonline.com
Call Us At: 217-427-2678

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Thursday, February 5, 2009

Lesson 48: Snap Shot Of Getting Started Keeping Honey Bees

Hello Everybody! We are David & Sheri Burns, taking all the confusion out of beekeeping. Our goal is to help more people start keeping bees! And it is working. More and more people have taken up beekeeping because of our efforts. We are trying to spread the word about how important honey bees are to all of us.

Yesterday, out of the blue, I was asked by FOX NEWS to do a live interview on the Neil Cavuto show. I welcomed the opportunity to get the word out on national news about the plight of the honey bee. Click here to watch the interview.

Many people want to start keeping bees, but are clueless as to when to start, what to buy, how to do it and where to buy everything. Then, there is the huge learning curve of knowing what you are doing.

Here at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms, we know these are challenges to prospective beekeepers, so we are doing our part to walk you through how to become a beekeeper. We want to make it simple and easy to understand.

Beekeeping is a wonderful hobby, and can become a home-based business as your hives expand. Many customers tell us how much they enjoy beekeeping and how relaxing it really is.

So in today's Basic Beekeeping Lesson #47, we want to give you a snap shot of how to start keeping honey bees. Are you ready? Let's go!

1) Buy Your Equipment, called Woodenware because most bee hives are made of wood. Our cost of a complete hive is $249, assembled and painted. Nothing to build or paint! When should you buy your hive? NOW! Jan- May

2) Buy Your Bees. We ship your bees to you through UPS if you also order a hive, otherwise plan to pick up at our facility. You receive 3 pounds of bees, which is about 10,000 bees and 1 queen. The package is about the size of a shoe box with a screen around it. Within the package there is a can of sugar water that the bees eat while being shipped to you. The typical cost of our package of bees including shipping is $96. Bees must be purchased between Jan-April. Most packages of bees sell out fast, so it is important to order your bees in the winter months!

3) Buy Your Tools. Basic equipment includes a hive tool to help separate the frames and hive boxes when you look inside your hive, a smoker which is used to puff smoke into the hive to calm the bees before you open up to look and a hat and veil to give you protection and increase your confidence in working your bees. Our cost of all of these pieces of equipment is $59 for the hat/veil, smoker and hive tool. Timing: Make sure you have your equipment on hand prior to getting your bees :)

4) Once you order your items, review our online FREE lessons. Our lessons are very easy to follow and will answer all your questions. Each lesson will walk you through the entire process of keeping bees. For example, our Lesson Seven will walk you through how to install your first package. It is simple and easy to understand.

5) We are your mentors! Every new beekeeper needs someone to call or email with questions. We are here to answer your questions. When you purchase your items from us, we'll be your personal mentor. Believe me, this is a huge sacrifice of our time, but we do it because we appreciate our customer's business and we want our customers to feel comfortable in keeping bees.

Myself Bhupinder Singh from India. i am Bee Keeper and in this profession since last 15 years. So, i am looking for Bee Keeping conference & other activities where i can learn new things and share my experience,.so when your conference is going toheld and what are the formalities for it.

I signed up for a local class (santa cruz mtns, ca.) in june. when i realized it would be too late to do much this year i read your lessons. I built a hive, your nice wife sent me some gear. In short i now have 2 very happy hives. I would not have done this, but for your blog. thanks you sooooooo much.

Just FYI readers! never understaminate the power of the honey Bee. There is currently a program where Bee's are being taught to sniff drugs and other types of illegal substances. They have found that by exposing Bee's via there food to different source matierals the bee's natural feeding mechanism the toung is ultra sensitive and by placing bee's in a special bos with some type of infra-red light in it when the box is passed over or by something containing the the drugs the bees start to react like they are feeding thur making the Bee's toung move rapidly and they can set off the machine by having so many licks per second or the like's. I thought it was interesting to say the least I am sorry for the poor return on the story I did not do it justice.

David has spent years keeping bees, producing queens, making up packages of bees, crop pollination, removing bees from homes, speaking and writing about bees. Give David a call if you have any questions about our beekeeping classes.

Take A Look At Sheri's Sweet Life

My wife Sheri has a popular blog called Sheri's Sweet Life. She talks about cooking with honey, beekeeping and anything else that's going on around here. Click Here To Take A Look

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We're In The News Again

BASIC LESSONS NOW AVAILABLE ON PDF DOWNLOADS

We are slowly adding a new feature to our basic beekeeping lessons. We are expanding our lessons into a pdf file available to either download or to print.CLICK HERETake a look and tell us what you think.